Orange Laws: Illegal Recycling?

I've written already about "orange laws", so I will make this quick.

China can ban the color orange.    They can arrest people for wearing orange.  There was a threat to silently protest Tianaman Square during the Olympics in 2008 by telling everyone in the crowd to wear orange.  People honestly thought they'd be arrested...

China is a sovereign, they can make laws and we cannot change them.  However, it's a mistake to incorporate a CHINA law into USA export law.  

R2 Draft 2013 commits this error, by saying that any export must be legal in both countries.   They should say any WASTE product.  China can (and does) outlaw tested working Pentium 4, 2 week old, laptops to be imported used.  It's a protectionist law which is actually illegal under the WTO (China agreed to the Doha Round eliminating protectionism against fully functional and cores).

If the USA simply says "if it's illegal in China, it's not allowed", and then a state like Vermont incorporates (mandates) R2, then it becomes a criminal act for me in Vermont to sell an orange shirt to China... or a fully functional laptop.

Or used books...

Exporting for Dummies

Or printed recycled paper.

Because China bans distribution of a lot of things in writing.

And I cannot go through every book in this lot, sold on Alibaba, to see if there's a copy of the Dalai Lama's book in there.   Its a 43,000 lb. lot.  If His Holiness the Dalai Lama's book is in there, I have violated China's laws, and therefore can be arrested for violating R2, which is Vermont law...

Question for the Dali Lama: Transcendance vs. Tradition

Going to see him at Middlebury College today (Friday) and tomorrow.

How do you balance the defense of tradition made increasingly "exotic" by globalization, with the Buddhist empowerment of transcendance?

Recycling Human Beings After Ramadan

I'm in Montreal for the weekend, with my wife and our 12 year old son, speaking Franglais and restaurant hopping and seeing bugs at the Insectarium.

But the highlight of my trip was last evening, when we hosted a modest dinner reunion for friends at the original Basha's Restaurant (the first Lebanese Cuisine restaurant in North America, according to the website).  It was the "End of Ramadam" meal, and a busy long line of eaters at 8:30PM set the restaurant into a mass-feeding, no special orders mode.   We met with 9 friends, all with connections to WR3A and Fair Trade Recycling.



Jean Frederic Somda ("Mr. Fred" at our plant) and Hamdy of Egypt met, with friends Pascal et Isabelle, and  six children jabbering together in 3-4 languages (typical Montreal).

Learned English in Quebec

Mr. Fred is by all accounts the most prestigious WR3A Intern.  He was at his peak somewhere in the crooked line of ascension in the politics of Burkina Faso.   He was popular with the USA State Department, as a former seminary student with impeccable morals.  He was Attorney General or Prosecutor General, refused to prosecute "political enemies" and fell so far "out of favor" that he had to leave in the dead of night. He gained political refugee status after his 6 months stint at our E-waste company.  He will be passing the bar exam in Canada in December, and has made a focus of international law and the Basel Convention.  He was always a classy, upscale, impeccable dresser and it was a thrill to me when he came to meet us in his "Good Point Recycling" T-Shirt.

He met with Hamdy and Hamdy's wife and child.  Hamdy was one of my oldest trading parterns, one who I sold an interesting chunk of the 300,000 used computers I'd exported as of 2011, when he left Egypt with his wife and family.  He had the economic resources, unlike Fred, to get permanent resident status in Montreal based on economic grounds.   He described Egypt as a place of hope and change, but shared worries.  It was no longer safe to walk the streets at 2 in the morning, he said, describing the balance between Egyptians fear and dependence on the law and order of the military.